Controversies over the Fundamentals

I.The Turbulent Twenties- Controversies over the Fundamentals, 1922-1927 a.Superficially, events in the Presbyterian church in the decades preceding 1920 might make one suppose that the Fundamentalists were entering the years of fierce controversy with a strong chance of winning the battle. b.It was not to be so, for the church was like “rotten wood,” as B. B. Warfield put it c.Harry Emerson Fosdick i.Much of the controversy of the 1920s revolved around Harry Emerson Fosdick

1.    a modernist who had recently become associate pastor of First Presbyterian Church in New York City without transferring his ordination from the Baptist to the Presbyterian ministry.

2.From this pulpit, on Sunday morning May 21, 1922, Fosdick preached one of the most provocative sermons in American church history-”Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” . a.Appeal for theological latitude. b.He personally rejected all nonessentials i.Bible’s inerrancy ii.Christ’s virgin birth iii.Christ’s physical return ii.Immediately, Clarence Edward Macartney (1879- 1957), pastor of Philadelphia’s Arch Street Presbyterian Church, responded with a sermon 1.he titled “Shall Unbelief Win?”.

2.    Spearheading a conservative movement in opposition to Fosdick, Macartney led the Philadelphia Presbytery to force the 1922 General Assembly to take immediate action against the New York “pulpit.”

3.(It could not deal directly with Fosdick, for he was not a Presbyterian.) 4.The overture (request for action by the Presbytery) expressed the following: a.The Presbytery of Philadelphia hereby respectfully overtures the General Assembly to direct the Presbytery of New York to take such action as will require the preaching and teaching in the First Presbyterian Church of New York City to conform to the system of doctrine taught in the Confession of Faith. b.The New York Presbytery, however, proved to be a major thorn in the conservatives’ side, not only because of its reluctance to deal with Fosdick’s church, but especially because of its established practice of ordaining graduates of Union Seminary. iii.The 1923 General Assembly, meeting in Indianapolis, elected Charles F. Wishart (1894-1960), the liberal-backed president of Ohio’s Wooster College, as moderator. Defeating William Jennings Bryan on the fourth ballot.

1.Also indicative of Fosdick’s widespread support were the tolerance resolutions, which 425 students and 62 faculty members at Massachusetts’s Mount Holyoke College signed. ‘° iv.The following year, Albert C. Dieffenbach, editor of a Unitarian weekly, The Christian Register, published: “I have the profoundest respect for a man who is consistently a fundamentalist, or for a man who is consistently a Roman Catholic, but I have no respect for the attitude of Dr. Fosdick. . . . When he goes to Cambridge he speaks in terms of liberalism and when he comes to New York he says, ‘I am an evangelical Christian!’ “ v.The General Assembly’s Judicial Commission recommended in 1924 that the New York Presbytery invite Fosdick to become a Presbyterian. Unwilling to subscribe in any way to a confession of faith, Fosdick politely declined and submitted his resignation to his church, effective March 1925